It seems like a really obvious fact –- if you’ve ever spent about five seconds reading the informational packet that comes with your pills, ring, patches, etc., you’ll see a clearly-marked chart detailing the typical failure rate of just about every form of birth control imaginable.

And yet, somehow, the one thing that anti-abortion and pro-choice activists seem to be able to agree on is this: that women who have multiple abortions are irresponsible sluts who are too stupid to figure out how to use condoms or get a prescription for the pill. Obviously.

It never seems to occur to people that it’s possible to accidentally get pregnant no matter how responsible you are, or how hard you work to avoid pregnancy to begin with.

Certainly, not everyone has the resources to behave “responsibly” -- access to affordable birth control is an issue for many low-income women, and they have just as much right to safe, affordable abortion services as anyone else. But the truth of the matter is, as much as we’d all like it to be, contraception is not 100% effective. You can use it flawlessly and still end up unexpectedly pregnant.

I should know. It’s happened to me twice, on two different forms of birth control: the progestin-only pill and the copper IUD.

To be fair, the pill I was on is a little less reliable than the combination pills that contain estrogen -- with a failure rate of 3-5% rather than 1-2%. My mother had a massive blood clot when I was a teenager due to the estrogen in her pills, and we don’t know if there’s a hereditary risk, so I just preferred to exchange the slight risk of pregnancy with the slight risk of severe injury or death.

The only kids I want right now are the fuzzy kind.

I’m lucky that, both times, I had a partner by my side who supported my decision 100%. The first time, we’d only been dating about 4 months. Both of us were in school and neither of us had the money to take care of a child. One of us would have had to drop out to make it work. I probably would have had to quit my part-time job. We might have ended up living with our parents to make ends meet and secure childcare. It was an easy choice to make. After the procedure, I had the less failure-prone IUD put in, with high hopes. It worked without too many problems for about two years.

The second time, we were married. I was trapped in nightmarish hellhole of a job, barely making ends meet in a foreign country, with a boss whose crazy demands left me too fatigued to function and caused me to develop stress-induced migraines. In the previous couple of years, I’d learned I was host to all kinds of lovely hereditary diseases, like celiac disease, debilitating anxiety issues, and a family history of freaking leukemia. My husband and I had talked long and hard about our attitudes toward parenting not long before I got pregnant, and agreed that we were not financially or emotionally equipped to raise well-adjusted children, and that if we ever were, it would be better to adopt than risk passing on my family’s horrible health problems. This time, it was an even easier choice.

Our story isn’t really rare or uncommon. According to the Guttmacher Institute, a whopping 49% of pregnancies are unplanned. About 5% of those cases occur with women who are using birth control perfectly, and another 43% with those who use birth control less consistently. And let’s be honest, that’s probably most people.

Why don’t we hear about birth control failure more often? If I had to guess, I’d give two reasons. The first is probably because a huge number of women were planning to have kids eventually, so an “oops” baby isn’t a life-shattering ordeal. They just have the kid. The second is that most women who have an abortion when their contraception fails don’t want to talk about it. With the verbal abuse hurled at us, I don’t blame anyone for staying silent. Hell, I don’t talk about it that often either. (Fun fact: my cousin once told me she literally hoped I would drop dead after my first abortion!)

I have exactly zero regrets about my abortions, but I can’t honestly say they didn’t affect me. Abortion is physically traumatic, especially if you’re already in poor health. The first time, I had a medical abortion -- the actual abortion pill, not Plan B -- and sat on the toilet for hours with cramps and diarrhea so bad I actually thought I might die. (Seriously, I had my boyfriend call the clinic’s emergency line more than once that night.) The second time, I opted for outpatient surgery and was left with low blood pressure and anemia that lingered for weeks. It took months before I felt anything resembling normal.

It took even longer before I could have sex with my husband again without fear. It wasn’t fair to him, and it made us both miserable. But I lived in terror of accidentally getting pregnant again. I took the pill on top of my supposedly low-maintenance IUD for the next year, for added protection. I still don’t know if I’ll ever escape the nagging worry each time my period draws near.

Luckily, I now have amazing insurance at my new job, and a great new ob/gyn who was happy to tackle the challenge of my super-fertility. (She’s told me to come in any time if I decide I just want to be sterilized. That seems a little too invasive for me considering my ongoing health issues, but it’s nice to have a doctor who actually offers the option to a childless 28-year-old.) I now have a copper IUD and a hormonal implant installed to ensure that there is almost zero chance of another “accident.” If I weren’t sensitive to latex condoms and the available latex-free options actually came in more than one size, I’d probably add a third layer of protection to the mix, just to be extra-extra-safe.

Both of these forms of birth control are expensive and kind of painful to have inserted. I have some unpleasant side effects like irregular bleeding and random cramps throughout the month. But it’s completely worth the peace of mind.

Still not ashamed. My handwriting could probably use some work, though.

Although I’m a professional writer and outspoken pro-choice advocate, I went back and forth on whether to pitch this story anywhere for a year and a half. I didn’t know if I was ready to handle the inevitable backlash.

I know that despite being in a committed marriage with the love of my life, I’ll be called a slut. I know that despite taking ridiculous precautions above and beyond the call of duty to avoid pregnancy, someone out there will think I’m somehow irresponsible and probably send me hate mail about it. I know some unhinged person out there will be outraged that I’m not fulfilling my womanly destiny by having as many kids as possible, and that there will be people who suggest I should just completely abstain from sex with my husband until menopause.

But this is important. It’s an issue that affects millions of women in the U.S. alone, many of whom are simply not fortunate enough to have the easy access to abortion that I’ve had. If I’d had to travel hours out of state for a doctor’s appointment or been forced to take multiple days off work due to a mandatory waiting period, my life might be very different. And it’s an issue that just doesn’t manage to make it into the abortion debate.

We need to acknowledge that birth control failure exists and that it’s distressingly common. We can’t pretend that abortion will suddenly cease to exist if we guarantee universal access to contraception, although that’s a noble goal. We can’t keep treating women who’ve had abortions like idiots who refuse to take basic precautions to prevent pregnancy. And we can’t keep stigmatizing women who’ve had more than one abortion, as if it proves something about their character, morals or intelligence. We shouldn’t tell women they should be ashamed of something they simply couldn’t do anything to avoid.

Sometimes, the numbers are against you. Sometimes, it’s just bad luck.

I’ve been getting a lot of comments about my haircut in the past week. You see, almost five months ago, I packed up and moved from the arid climate of Denver, Colorado to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. If you’ve never been to Southeast Asia, there’s just one thing you need to know: I’m living in the tropics.

Complete with palm trees and monkey crossings in the middle of the city.

That means not only is it around 90 degrees out every afternoon, it’s also incredibly humid. And while family and friends back home are complaining about the cold and snow, the seasonal changes around here are considerably warmer and wetter. That’s right: I’m about 6 weeks into monsoon season.

My hair was short to begin with, but apparently it doesn’t react well to extreme humidity. So after about a month of wrestling with it, developing cowlicks in places I didn’t even know I had them, I got fed up. I did what most of the guys I work with already did a long time ago. I buzzed my hair.

“I know it looks good!” I want to scream. “That’s why I’ve been shaving my head on and off for five years!”

But I work with these people, and I genuinely adore most of them, so I just smile and say, “Thank you,” instead. At least in this climate, people are willing to accept my reasoning at face value, even if women with very short hair are a little rare in this conservative country.

When I first buzzed my hair five years ago, I expected to get a lot of attention. After all, cutting off your waist-length hair and shaving your head is a pretty dramatic change. I’d been talking about doing it for a few months beforehand, but apparently no one took me seriously until I actually pulled out the clippers and asked my sister to cut it all off.

At the time, I was happy to explain my reasons to people. It really was a simple matter of comfort and convenience -– the same reasons men shave their heads.

The thing is: I have really thick hair. As in, so thick I couldn’t braid it or put it in a ponytail, because within about an hour it would come undone. So thick hairdressers don’t know how to handle it at any length, resulting in a lot of awkward and traumatizing haircuts over the years. So thick, it was taking me 15-20 minutes to wash, another 15 minutes just to brush out, and about 3 hours to dry naturally (using a hairdryer just resulted in horrible tangles, static, and frizz). And as a teenager, I probably cost my parents a small fortune in shampoo and conditioner alone.

I started talking about the idea of shaving my head a few months before I worked up the guts to actually do it. I was sick of dealing with it. I didn’t just want a haircut that was easier -– I wanted a haircut that was completely maintenance-free. And besides, I’d always thought women with buzz cuts were totally gorgeous, and wanted to do my part to spread the fuzzy love.

Here’s the thing about having long, beautiful, thick hair: It becomes a part of your person. People were horrified when I talked about wanting to cut it even a little bit shorter: “But it’s your trademark!” When I mentioned maybe just shaving it all off, people acted like they were trying to talk me down from a ledge: “That’s really drastic. Are you sure? Have you thought about maybe just getting a pixie cut?”

This sense of ownership and entitlement over my hairstyle decisions brought into relief something that had bothered me for years: People treated my hair like it was public property. Friends and family would walk up behind me and start playing with it without so much as a hello -– sometimes even random people I didn’t know all that well. And I have never received such intense and sometimes frightening street harassment (from men and women) as I did in those times when my hair was at its longest.

Totally awesome, right?

That realization was what ultimately spurred me to bite the bullet and cut it all off, despite the persistent worries that my head would turn out to be lumpy or my ears would look huge. (And yes, I donated every inch to Locks of Love.)

It turns out I look amazing with short hair. It was a new and exciting experience, being able to look in the mirror and realize, “Holy shit, I’m actually hot.” I’d never liked the way I looked before. I’d never felt comfortable in my own skin before.

My family and friends grumbled for a little while, but most of them adjusted pretty quickly to the shift. (And the ones that didn’t stopped asking if I was going to grow it back out after a year or so.) Everyone admitted it looked good. I kept it shaved, sometimes almost to the point of actual baldness, before letting it revert to a short “boy cut.” And every time I start growing it out a few inches, I realize how much of a hassle it is to regularly go to a salon and try to get a decent haircut, so I get frustrated and shave it again.

Over the years, every new person I meet invariably asks the same set of predictable questions all over again. Why did I do it? Am I ever going to grow it back out? Am I a lesbian? (Answer: not really?) Is my husband “okay” with it? And so on.

I understand that in a lot of places, meeting a woman with a shaved head isn’t an everyday experience, and I appreciate that they might be curious. I understand that I stand out. But on the other hand, there are tons of guys out there who shave their heads, for basically the same reasons I do. And no one cares.

When a guy keeps his hair short, it’s seen as a totally normal. No one asks why, because let’s face it, the benefits are pretty obvious. No one asks about his future plans for his hair, because that’s kind of weird. And no one implies he should ask his wife or girlfriend for permission before cutting his hair, because that’s totally fucked up.

It’s been five years, and I’m still not completely sure how to address these questions when they come up. On the one hand, I do actually want to engage with and educate people. And these questions are usually friendly and well meaning.

But after so long, I really just want to be done with it. It’s not new or novel anymore. I’d desperately like my haircut to become the same kind of non-issue it is for my male co-workers. So I keep wondering: Is there a polite way to change the subject, or tell people I just don’t want to talk about it?